Could I have a phobia about men?

I have a phobia that when I am alone with a man I cannot eat in front of them as I start having panic attacks. When I am alone with them I get so nerv...

14/05/2007

Question

I have a phobia that when I am alone with a man I cannot eat in front of him – as I start having panic attacks.

When I am alone with men I get so nervous that I get sick. I have fallen recently for a guy but cannot go on a date with him because I keep on being sick. I get that nervous that now I am falling into depression I am so frightened of him. I can’t speak to him or anything.

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Do I have a phobia of men? What is wrong with me? I have had this my whole life.

Answer

I am really sorry that you're having this trouble. It sounds to me as if you have quite a bad social phobia - and this is going to need treating. So my first task must be to urge you to go and talk to your GP about this as soon as possible.

I hope he or she will be able to refer you for counselling/therapy - preferably for cognitive behavioural therapy, as this is most effective for problems like this one.

However, while you're waiting for this specialist help, there are quite a number of things you can do for yourself. First of all, you need to bring your general levels of anxiety down. It's clear that men spark off a lot of anxiety in you - particularly in 'eating' situations. But I feel that you must be quite tense much of the time for this panic to bubble up so dramatically. So how can you learn to relax better?

Very good methods of reducing tension are:

meditation

yoga

sport and exercise

hypnosis

relaxation tapes.

I suggest you take a look at the three fact sheets I've written on stress:

You'll find that there is a lot of information in them about pursuing the relaxation methods I've outlined above. If you can take up some of these methods, and act on other advice described in the factsheets, you'll find that your life will quickly become quite a lot easier.

I also suggest you contact the National Phobics Society. This is a most helpful support group for people with phobic problems.

Finally, can I recommend a book that will help you? In fact, if you start tackling the exercises in the book, you will find you can make substantial progress towards helping yourself even before you see a therapist. It's called: 'Overcoming social anxiety and shyness' by Gillian Butler, published by Robinson.

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This is part of a whole series of self-help books using cognitive behavioural principles.

I'm sure that your social life must seem like a nightmare currently and I imagine you feel that your problems are insurmountable. But this isn't so. If you can chip away at this anxiety of yours, bit by bit, you will overcome it. When that happens you'll find that dating men will cease to be the huge difficulty that it is at the moment.

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